Hacker News Reader

Comment by sanxiyn | Hacker News Reader

> this temple is not authentic, it burned down 80 years ago and they rebuilt it from scratch

As a South Korean, I would like to understand the viewpoint of the "West" better. What is not authentic about rebuilt temple? No one is trying to mislead, restoration does not try to hide the fact it was restored.

Buildings require maintenance, so even buildings that is continuing to stand is not the same building, in the style of ship of Theseus. Difference from "rebuilt from scratch" is not clear cut.

Maybe wooden buildings make this clearer than stone buildings?

View on HN

I don't know about "the west", but I can give my own (Swedish) perspective on authenticity and age: The church in my village is quite new, about 150 years old. But it's built on the site of a much older church. The new church has a large bowl of carved limestone that where preserved from the old church. It's about 900 years old and is used for babtisms. Touching that old bowl gives me a tremendous sense of perspective, a feeling of belonging to a continium of people that has loved this place. The item itself is the important thing. I don't care that they have performed babtisms here for 900 years. The ritual is not important to me and I don't belive in that stuff anyway. I suppose it comes down to a cultural sense of whats real. To me, rituals and traditions are flimsy constructs. The new church is just like any other new building. But the material thing, the limestone bowl, thats real.

Maybe this is it. Rebuilt-from-scratch temples have name continuity. To me, traditions and names are no less real than material things.

Edit: e.g. I lived in Suwon, where Samsung Electronics is headquartered. From historical records, we know it was also called Suwon in the 8th century, more than 1000 years ago. I think this sense of wonder is no less real than touching of 1000 years old artifacts.

cultural difference explained in two forum posts... Why do so many people have difficulties in doing it as simply as that ?

Cultural differences don't need to be simple.

Honestly as a westerner I'm not quite sure what they are talking about either, because all your points seem valid to me.

If I'm to wager a guess they had a bad example because buildings and art are often restored. Maybe they were talking about types of entertainment? But I'm not sure I buy that either because of the popularity of reality television. And also because what the article is about just seems like a natural extension of your typical Disney pop star.

> No one is trying to mislead, restoration does not try to hide the fact it was restored.

The problem isn't the dishonesty, I'd just be disappointed that it's not the original thing because the original thing is infinitely more complex and layered and informative than a reconstruction. All the tiny flaws and subtle details you can find in the original can be lost in a reconstruction.

Buildings & architecture aren't my passion so it's harder for me to feel this about stuff like restored temples, but I sometimes feel this about things that I am passionate about.

It's like in the movie Inception (2010) [SPOILERS AHEAD]:

    Cobb: I can't stay with her anymore because she doesn't exist.

    Mal: I'm the only thing you do believe in anymore.

    Cobb: I wish. I wish more than anything. But I can't imagine you with all your complexity, all your perfection, all your imperfection. Look at you. You are just a shade of my real wife. You're the best I can do; but I'm sorry, you are just not good enough.

Yeah, but you will eventually run out of quirks of the material and slide back to the domain of human lives. You start to wonder why the technique changed slightly at a point to learn that the old mason died and his apprentice took over and so on.

At some point, you will surely start to wonder "what does that mean for MY life?" and one thing that comes to mind is "how did the institutions that enabled something this complex to come to be and survive for so long worked, compared to what we have now?" and that is the moment the wooden castle rebuilt every couple of years is really the same as the stone chapel.

I don't think East vs West is a fair generalization of this attitude. In Thailand someone is building an Angkor Wat replica and the Cambodian government is protesting because they see it as somehow cheapening the original. Angkor Wat has undergone very little reconstruction and where it has it's only sections which can be mostly rebuilt from original fragments. In Vietnam you can visit lots of temples that are complete rebuilds. In Cambodia there are hundreds or even thousands of ancient temples, none of which have any restoration done, and there is no movement to do any.

I would say the West sees the Theseus' ship as the same ship but rebuilt some scratch as not the same ship and that's where we draw the line.

The surprising part is nobody argues we should restore pyramids and repaint/reattach arms of roman statues. This makes me feel like there's the additional requirement that it needs to be a continuous process of restoration and you can't just restore it to what it was hundreds of years ago.

Restoration using traditional and well-documented techniques are perfectly "authentic". A modern replica pyramid built with steel and concrete, not so much.

An actual replica pyramid built using traditional methods? Not sure, but I would love to see it. :D

Restoration using traditional and well-documented techniques are perfectly "authentic".

Except people don't want "authentic", they want what they know. No one is suggestion restoring the pyramids to their original look because then they would look 'fake' to most people.

You see it in more mundane situations as well. If a houses was red for 300 years and then white for 150 years, and someone wants to paint it red again a lot of people will complain because that building has 'always' been white and red will feel inauthentic, even if you can prove with historical documentation that red was the original 'authentic' color.

The awe and wonder I get from an old building comes from 3 things:

1. This building is beautiful. 2. How did they build this all that time ago? For example, the Great Pyramids, Stonehenge, or a large stone cathedral built 800 years ago. 3. The sense of unbroken continuous activity in this building from the time it was built until now. Which connects me to history and a sense that by being in this place I am a part of something bigger than myself. This is stronger if the type of activity in the building has stayed the same for all that time. E.g. Attending a service in an 800 year old Cathedral makes you feel awe.

#1 Is still relevant if the building is restored, but #2 isn't.

#3 is interesting. If a building was damaged but restored immediately then the sense of continuity might remain intact. But if a building was left unoccupied, or it's use has changed then this effect is lessened. For example, visiting a 500 year old pub is better than visiting a 500 year old building that was recently turned into a pub. Visiting a royal palace in England has some quality to it that visiting Versailles doesn't have because there is no longer a French monarchy. Stonehenge is very impressive (because of #2) and even though some groups have started using it for rituals, there is no real connection to the original builders so it lacks awe on the #3 dimension.

Firstly, I don't think the West is that much against rebuilding, especially when the original was suddenly and tragically destroyed: just look at all the restored old city centers of Europe. This is more akin to healing a wound (of societal memory) to its original state.

However the stance is rather different for reviving long lost buildings, mostly coming from the architecture/archeological scene, not the general public. Their (kinda valid) argument is that these developments can never ever be authentic, and restoring them is anachronistic, driven by nationalism, and the goal is often to restore not only the place but the views of that time. A modern work - that would play homage, or provide a different new meaning - is viewed as actual progression.

I doubt this is an East-West thing at all. In Europe many famous buildings were destroyed in e.g. WW2 and have subsequently been rebuilt, same situation. The "West" here seems to equal the US, which mostly don't have such historical buildings in the first place.

I think "West" itself is a broad generalization. Something that is quite old in America is very new from a Roman point of view. So from that point of view, if an American sees a thousand year old temple, that is impressive/authentic. For, say, an Indian, it is impressive too but they have a bunch of those.

I don't think it's really a common viewpoint in the West. E.g. that temple in Paris that burned down, y'know, the Notre Dame, is being restored, and I doubt many people would see it as "not authentic" just because some parts had to be replaced.

I will! I don’t think they should leave it ruined, but something was definitely lost in the fire. Like a post above said, I do take please and feel connection by looking at a makers mark or accidental slip of the chisel in something built 1000 years ago. It’s the detail and closeness of past lives that we experience from original artefacts that gives their value, to me.

The building that stood there before the fire wasn't "authentic" either by that measure. The building that recently burnt down had been completely renovated and rebuilt several times and looked nothing like the building they first put up. The building that will stand there after this latest round of renovation will be a new building, but it won't be any less 'authentic' than any of the other renovations that came before.

I live in Berlin, which was flattened at the end of WW2 by the Soviet army (and some allied bombers).

Today you'd barely know that happened. My favourite example is Gendarmenmarkt [0] - a square with three church buildings on it.

When I first took a walking tour around Berlin, the guide flatly said "these were built in the 17th century" with no mention of being almost completely rebuilt after the war. That lead to an interesting discussion along the same lines as this (Theseus' ship and all).

I think the difference is the history. Preserving the memory of that destruction as part of the restoration is important. There should be visible scars. By all means restore the building to be functional, a useful part of the city again. But leave some scars. I love that there are still bullet holes in some of the old walls around the city centre.

One of my favourite descriptions of Berlin is actually by Iain M Banks in The State of The Art [1], and it talks about this - that the history is what makes the place so special. Restoring everything so that the history is removed would also remove something unique and special about the city.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gendarmenmarkt

[1] This is just an extract, there are several references to Berlin in the story, which obviously is well worth reading - https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/794671-there-is-something-a...

There is history in the material. Touching something that has been touched for 100s of years is almost spiritual. Seeing the cracks and splits, the dings and cuts. In the West history is tactile.

And it’s somehow not in places other than the West…? The temples I visited in South Korea were pretty tactile to me.

I think where the maintenance is continuous that has a different quality. Places in Japan are often like this - yes everything has been replaced, but primary timbers etc have not … there is continuity.

I think there is a strong analogy to personal identity here too. All the cells in our body are replaced, but we are still Ourselves! If too much were to be transplanted at once, or things we consider too fundamental, the suffer identity worries.

I don't think the parent implied it isn't but shared the common culture and sentiment in the west.

Maybe wooden buildings make this clearer than stone buildings?

I think that stone vs wood makes a significant difference in two major ways. One is simply time scale. Take Notre Dame as discussed in other places in this thread. While it has been rebuilt many times, it happens once every 150-250 years or so meaning that from the perspective of living memory what is there now has always been there. That is why many people consider the Notre Dame that burnt down the 'real' one and the one that will replace it as 'fake', despite neither on of them looking like the original. With wooden temples that get rebuilt every 50-80 years there is always someone around that remembers the last time it happened, making the framing of the event entirely different.

The other is that stone is very hard to destroy. Meaning that even if stone church burns down and get rebuilt several times there will always been parts of the original church incorporated into the latest building. It is not uncommon for churches in Europe to have visible parts of their foundation the where built 800+ years ago despite most of the church being 'new'. This is what gives something continuity.

> As a South Korean, I would like to understand the viewpoint of the "West" better. What is not authentic about rebuilt temple?

It is not the same building, just because it's the same form at the same place. It lacks the same "Experience" that forged the previous building. There is some value in individuality, at least on the emotional level. For example, every one has parents, but your own parents usually are the one which you consider special.

> Buildings require maintenance, so even buildings that is continuing to stand is not the same building, in the style of ship of Theseus.

Western buildings are usually not getting replaced in its whole. Most parts of the building will remain over its whole life. Similar happening with other old objects. Books are still valued for their age, even if the text they contain can be found elsewhere.

The value of old objects is their age and their history, not their content or function.

The issue is uniqueness. If you can replicate a building exactly as it was 100 years ago, then the original one has no particular value. To make sure to distinguish the original one from a copy, people add value to its uniqueness by saying it can't be replicated 100%.

When I visited Pompeii, I would have loved to see the city rebuilt as how it was originally. They have pictures here and there displaying how the city could have been but I think that the immersiveness would have been much greater if it looked as it was previously.

I have no problem with the original building being restored or rebuit from scratch rather than with copies of that building springing up where'd you least expect it, just like garden gnomes.

https://www.wonders-of-the-world.net/Eiffel-Tower/Repliques/...

> Maybe wooden buildings make this clearer than stone buildings?

I think so: they don't normally require or get this kind of maintenance by replacement. The mortar might be repaired, but the stones tend to be original. The Roman forum, the pyramids, the Sphinx, Stonehenge: all original stones.

Its just some standard applied to Eastern cultures where things are supposed to be unchanged from olden times. Large parts of the many monuments in Europe were reconstructed post second world war. Nobody says they are 'not authentic'.

Oh, I'm sure you guys will have this one figured out soon. :D

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus

Reply on news.ycombinator.com